Albert O Hirschman, the influential German economist and social scientist who died in 2012 at the age of 97, was fond of the “rule of three” in writing. He frequently used tripartite mottos in the titles of his many books and essays, including in his two most famous works: Exit, Voice, and Loyalty: Responses to Decline in Firms, Organizations, and States and The Rhetoric of Reaction: Perversity, Futility, Jeopardy.
Hirschman’s work is relevant to Australia’s debate about a First Nations Voice to Parliament. He provides useful insights into the different approaches and objectives of Indigenous activists, as well as the argumentative styles of their opponents.
Most significantly, the author’s hope and optimism — vital characteristics of his overall approach to politics and economics — provide a spur for those fighting for Indigenous recognition and self-determination, regardless of the outcome of the referendum.
First Peoples’ choice: exit or voice?
In Exit, Voice, and Loyalty (1970), Hirschman weighed up two possible responses — exit or voice — for individuals dissatisfied with an organisation in which they’re involved, whether as a family member, a customer of a profit-seeking business, a member of a voluntary association, a citizen of a nation-state, or just about anything in between. Put simply, his dichotomy proposes that one can either quit the body and find another, or raise one’s voice in protest in the hope for improvements.
Orthodox economists, with their faith in the sanctity of free markets, tend to favour the exit strategy. In this view, which holds more weight in commercial endeavours, the rejection of one entity will lead a consumer to adopt a better alternative. The original entity will then suffer the consequences — the invisible hand of the market working as it should.
But Hirschman rejected this, preferring voice as a strategy of institutional change. In contrast to the economist’s desire for cold efficiency, Hirschman appreciated the messiness of voice, which can range from faint grumbling to violent protest. “Voice is political action par excellence,” he wrote. Critically, voice is tied to and reinforces the loyalty of the dissatisfied member. If one is listened to within an entity, one is much more likely to feel closely aligned with its values and goals.
Faced with terror, dispossession and neglect at the hands of the state, the exit option holds considerable appeal for many Indigenous peoples. An example is the Aboriginal provisional government, established in 1990 on the principles of Aboriginal sovereignty, self-determination and self-government. The next generation of this approach is typified by the Warriors of the Aboriginal Resistance (WAR), which formed in 2014 and is committed to decolonisation and Aboriginal nationalism. Though these organisations of course raise their voices in protest as well, they ultimately seek exit from the state’s colonial apparatus.
In contrast, countless Indigenous activists have for many decades sought a voice within the state through various organisations, consultative bodies, petitions and protests. With 2017’s Uluru Statement from the Heart, they sought to enshrine such a Voice in the Australian constitution.
In doing so, the authors state that First Peoples’ never-ceded sovereignty co-exists with that of the Crown’s, implicitly acknowledging a kind of “loyalty”, using Hirschman’s framework. The statement declares: “With substantive constitutional change and structural reform, we believe this ancient sovereignty can shine through as a fuller expression of Australia’s nationhood.”
For 235 years, the assimilationist colonial state has demanded the loyalty of Indigenous peoples while denying them either exit or a meaningful voice. The Voice to Parliament can be seen as an elegant way of asserting First Peoples’ rights, while offering the state an opportunity to work together to eliminate the injustices they face.
Anti-Voice rhetoric: perversity, futility, jeopardy
What, then, of the Voice’s critics? Here we turn to The Rhetoric of Reaction (1991). Surveying the currents of thought in response to three major movements for social change across the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries — the French Revolution and demands for equal rights; campaigns for universal suffrage; the development of the welfare state — Hirschman identifies three distinctive oppositional theses:
- Perversity, in which any attempt to improve social conditions will exacerbate problems that exist;
- Futility, in which the attempt will not change anything;
- Jeopardy, in which the attempt will endanger previously accomplished gains.
While Hirschman mostly associates these argumentative styles with “reactionaries” of the right, he also considers the ways in which they are adopted by liberals and leftists.
The right-wing case for voting No to the Voice to Parliament — led by Opposition Leader Peter Dutton, Coalition Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price and Nyunggai Warren Mundine, backed by virtually the entire conservative commentariat, and outlined in the AEC’s official referendum pamphlet — has embraced all three of Hirschman’s theses in its campaign to date.
The left-wing No case — articulated most prominently by independent Senator Lidia Thorpe and the Blak Sovereign Movement — has also drawn on the three styles, albeit in different ways.
To the right, the Voice is perverse, because rather than bringing Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians together, it will permanently divide the country. Furthermore, Dutton has argued that the Voice will create division among Indigenous peoples by being composed of a Canberra-based elite of Indigenous academics with little to no experience of issues faced “on the ground”. Needless to say, this view has been emphatically rejected.
The left’s perversity argument is more complex, in that the Voice is seen as a way for governments to continue to delay action on the issues that matter most to them. Why, for example, does the federal government need a First Nations Voice to tell it to implement in full the recommendations from the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody and the Bringing Them Home report, both of which have been sitting on Canberra desks for more than a quarter of a century?
The futility thesis is where the left and right No cases find themselves in almost total agreement. Both see the Voice as simply doing nothing to help Indigenous peoples — it will neither close the gap in social and economic outcomes nor achieve reconciliation. The main difference is that the left would prefer a body with real teeth, negotiated through treaties, whereas the right sees any such proposal as an even greater threat than the Voice.
Finally, conservatives and leftists have their distinct versions of the jeopardy thesis. On the right, the Voice presents a genuine risk to our system of government: it leaves all legislation open to legal challenge, risks political dysfunction and opens the door for activists to push for further radical change. It will even reverse the gains of the 1967 referendum, which, according to this skewed reading, brought an end to racial segregation in Australia. On the left, the jeopardy thesis hinges on one simple issue: the notion that Aboriginal sovereignty will be ceded with the establishment of the Voice.
Hirschman’s hope
Confronted by the extraordinary difficulty of constitutional change and a barrage of objections from right and left, the Voice to Parliament is in serious jeopardy. But Yes campaigners might find solace in the deeds and words of Hirschman.
Hirschman lived a remarkable life. At enormous risk as a Jew, he had escaped the Nazis twice by the time he was 25 — from Germany in 1933 and France in 1940 — along the way finding time to fight fascists in Spain and helping more than 2000 Jews and leftists to escape from Nazi-occupied France. He later made it to the US, where his long career as an economist and academic began.
Despite the trauma of his youth, Hirschman was a hopeful and optimistic thinker to the end. This approach was rooted in what he called his “possibilism” — searching beyond the probable for ways in which seemingly eternal political and economic problems may be resolved: “The fundamental bent of my writings has been to widen the limits of what is or is perceived to be possible, be it at the cost of lowering our ability, real or imaginary, to discern the probable.”
The Voice grew out of a similar kind of possibilism — a creative way to resolve the inherent tension of First Peoples’ relationship to the Australian state. Whether the referendum succeeds or not, First Peoples and their supporters will have to continue to imagine what it is possible to achieve, rather than be constrained by the limits of our constitutional framework.
Thanks. An interesting article.
The “progressive” no people say it is not a problem if the “no” case wins, as they will still be here fighting like they have for hundreds of years, and they will keep fighting until they get their way. This appears to be a bit delusional at this point. The Statement of the Heart appears to represent the closest to consensus that is likely to be achievable amongst First Nations people and The Voice is a very modest ask of the Australian people, as part of a well-thought-through staged approach. Yet even this modest ask is looking like it is going to crash and burn due to the “progressive” and hard right no campaigns.
If the “progressive” no people do not form the majority view of First Nations people, do not appear to have a realistic consistent agenda and are asking for way more of the Australian people than what is asked for under The Voice, and they have partnered with hard-right-wingers who will fight tooth and nail against what they ultimately want, how are they going to get anywhere this century?
They might argue they have been here over 60,000 years so another 100 years is nothing. That is a tragic amount of continuing suffering that maybe The Voice can help. It has a better chance of helping sooner than what the no case are arguing about/ for.
Unquestionably the anger of the “progressive” no people is 100% legitimate and justified and legitimate parts of their arguments heard and acknowledged. But their approach of burning the joint doesn’t seem to be progress.
If it’s what you believe, then perhaps you’re a pessimist or some kind of knotted up intellectual thinker, because there is no evidence about the outcome of a vote that is to take place in the future. The future is wide open.
Huh. I’ve come across a bit of Voice criticism from the left, but nothing that just came out and said it like that: it will cede sovereignty. Of course you can argue that it doesn’t, but it’s a bit of a slog.
Although, Indigenous sovereignty so far hasn’t counted for much – people in government occasionally like to make pretty noises designed to create a sense of hope and unity, and faith in the system, but at the end of the day, that’s just part of the window dressing covering an unholy mess of competing self-interest of the ruling class.
No appeal to higher principles (for instance, those our society is allegedly based on) has a snowflake’s chance in this joint unless it also happens to promise something useful to someone powerful. It’s actually a bit surprising, that not even a handful of the big-time players fighting for the biggest slice of the pie seem to know or care that making the pie bigger for everyone is an option, but there we go.
Greed is virtue; seeking justice is unjust; clearly unsustainable business is the only option. Everyone is hostage to filthy rich white supremacist sociopaths, abetted by their highly-paid MSM generals and an army of dupes miseducated into fascism. Hopes for rising generations to shake off the insane boomer fog go unanswered.
In case you missed it, I’m counselling against optimism. If there’s is anything approaching a solution, it won’t be found by looking in places which don’t exist. I see too many others who should know better, allowing themselves to believe at least some of the pretty lies. We’re peasants, slaves, livestock. Work from there.
Tend to agree, and the modus operandi is nothing new, see Brexit, Trump, climate science etc. and successful in Australia; targeting older, regional, less educated and less diverse voters, on a diet of legacy MSM (&/or anodyne ABC).
Whether climate science or gay marriage vote, it’s deny (the need), delay, deflect and (try) dismiss, permanently….
Agreed, the paid up bleachingly corrupt other voice, the audio version of Mr Creosote portrayed so earnestly by conservative media are all powerful, this has to be acknowledged and recognised for what it is.
Interesting piece, thanks. The Voice is made for Hirschmanian analysis. Considering the issues in this way may point to another dimension of the current debate too. Is the Voice debate in part a proxy war over whether we trust voices of any kind? If voice is “political action par excellence”, then whether or not we like the idea of voices will be closely related to whether or not we like the idea of political action. So the vote over the Voice may be about other things than Indigenous recognition. It may also be a vote over whether we affirm or reject politics as such. The paradox is that speaking up against the Voice is an exercise *of* voice and therefore inevitably political. I think this captures the contradictions of the ‘No’ campaign quite well. It is a highly political campaign against … politics.
Nice catch
Whatever.
So long as more First Nations kids get to be doctors, lawyers, dentists, bankers, stock brokers and scientists, that gap is going to close and Australia is going to be an even better place.
Whilst First Nations doctors, lawyers, and possibly even bankers are essential, the gap doesn’t close from the top; it closes from the bottom. It’s creating a life of purpose and meaning, with security for those at the bottom that will make Australia a better place.
Oh how would that work?
A helpful summation.